The diagnosis of depression is made based on the presence of “symptoms” said to be characteristic of the disorder. The diagnosis does not provide a causal explanation for the presence of the symptoms, as there is no known biological marker that explains the underlying reasons for those symptoms. Yet, in a recent study, Jane Kajanoja and Jussi Valtonen found that prominent health organizations regularly present depression as a condition that causes its symptoms, which—as they write—is misleading and scientifically inaccurate.
By analyzing authoritative mental health websites, the researchers found that many leading organizations, including the World Health Organization and the American Psychiatric Association, contribute to this misunderstanding by conflating descriptive diagnoses with causal explanations. This common practice on authoritative health websites perpetuates a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of psychiatric diagnoses.
“We’d noticed that people often talk about psychiatric diagnoses as if they were explanations for the difficulties they describe,” Jussi Valtonen, a professor at the University of the Arts Helsinki, said in an email correspondence about the study.
“So we were intrigued by this discrepancy between what psychiatric diagnoses are and how people talk about them, and we wanted to see how clearly the descriptive nature of psychiatric diagnoses is communicated to the general public by trusted health organizations,” Valtonen continued.
“It’s crucial from a science communication standpoint that the information people are given be scientifically accurate – both because truthfulness is intrinsically important in science communication, but also because information disseminated by authoritative health organizations affects our cultural understandings of what psychiatric diagnoses are and what it means to receive one.”
“We had expected that the line between descriptions and causal explanations might sometimes get blurred. We were astonished, however, to see how extremely common it was to see authoritative health organizations using blatantly causal language on their websites.”
“It was clearly not the case that the line just sometimes gets inadvertently a little blurry here and there. Rather, what we found is that many health institutions, in fact, quite widely and actively promote an understanding of depression that’s not only scientifically inaccurate but also based on circular logic. Similarly to how ‘a headache’ does not explain what’s causing the pain in an individual’s head, a diagnosis of major depression does not explain what’s causing the low mood and other symptoms the individual is suffering from.”
Kajanoja and Valtonen’s research analyzed the content of leading mental health websites and discovered that a majority inaccurately depict depression as causing the symptoms it describes. This circular reasoning is not only scientifically flawed but also potentially harmful, as it obscures the true nature of mental health issues and reinforces stigma. The study calls for health organizations to provide clearer, more accurate information that distinguishes between descriptive diagnoses and causal explanations.
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